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As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether colleges should be allowed to use racial preferences in admissions, San Antonio's public and private universities say they don't need it — their access to a diverse applicant pool lets them assemble a diverse student body without considering race.

If, as predicted, the state's and nation's future demographics look more and more like San Antonio in the coming decades, then other universities may reap similar benefits, some local officials speculated.

On Wednesday, the high court heard arguments in a challenge to the University of Texas at Austin's admissions policy, which considers race as one of several admissions factors for those not automatically admitted by high school class rank.

Competition for a spot at area schools is less fierce than at UT-Austin and local officials still support the use of race as an admissions factor there and elsewhere.

The University of Texas at San Antonio has a far larger acceptance rate than UT-Austin, but even as they tighten admissions criteria and raise SAT score cutoffs, UTSA officials have seen diversity on campus increase. Hispanic students make up 45 percent of the student body this fall, up from 43 percent in 2009.

“We're practically the poster child of diversity for student populations,” said George Norton, UTSA associate vice president for student affairs. “This happens for us in a natural way and, therefore, we don't need to focus on that in the admissions process.”

He said he understands why schools in high demand, like UT-Austin, want the option of using race in admissions. UT-Austin's fall 2012 acceptance rate was 47 percent of applicants, while UTSA's was 73 percent, according to preliminary figures from both universities.

“When your class is nearly completely filled by people who have guaranteed admission (by the state's top 10 percent law), then it gives the institution no leeway to craft their class and decide how they want to develop their student population,” Norton said.

Elite private universities that receive federal funding, like Harvard, Stanford and Yale, have filed court arguments in favor of allowing the continued use of race in admissions, fearing that a ruling to the contrary will affect their own policies.

“Our applicant pool is quite diverse and as a result our admit pool and those who enroll are, as well,” said Chris Ellertson, Trinity's associate vice president for enrollment and student retention. He said 38 percent of its first-year students come from historically underrepresented groups.

Trinity's acceptance rate this fall was 64 percent. But comparisons based solely on that statistic can be misleading. Ellertson said most of his applicants have a 3.8 high school grade point average and above average SAT scores.

There's “a benefit for admission offices to be able to shape and enroll classes based upon a comprehensive and holistic group of students,” because diversity adds educational value, he said.

“Diversity does help people understand the world,” Romo said. “If everybody else is like you and there are no differences, then people ... graduate and they can't handle the workforce where there are differences.”